Eurovision: Rants from a barefooter

Tag Archives: italy

According to Twitter this year, there were two national selections that lasted way longer than they should have: the NF’s from Italy and Ukraine. Given that they weren’t on the same day, scheduling wouldn’t be a problem. But if they did overlap, pick Italy for more musical performances and Ukraine for more drama among the juries.

Jamala is not pleased about this.

In the case of Italy, the performances occurred, juries cast their votes, and a winner, Stadio, was selected. They declined due to scheduling issues. (And since San Remo is older than Eurovision, some of the artists just go for that one night and not to the contest in May.) Eventually RAI selected Francesca Michielin with “Nessun Grado de Separazione”, eventually re-titled as “No Degree of Separation” with one refrain translated into English.

Considering that part of the inspiration behind the song was the game 6 Degrees of Separation, then I wonder if she plays Wikipedia golf, hopping from page to page and getting par 5 while going from DeBeers diamonds to Natalie Portman. In the case of Francesca and Eurovision, she would only need one click between the two pages. So that’s easy.

I don’t know how to describe the song besides saying that it’s “very Italian” and that it’s not something that I would typically listen to. It reminds me a bit of Italy’s 2013 entry, which seemed really laid back yet didn’t need any major choreography to tell a story; all she would need is the camera angles and a way to show the audience that through the screen, everyone’s connected.

Italy went back to San Remo Festival (a.k.a. the precursor to Eurovision) as a national final, and they selected the group Il Volo (“The Flight”) with the song “Grande Amore.”

I didn’t listen to the song until RAI officially announced that the song was going to represent Italy because the song was a minute too long and no one really knew what Il Volo would perform. Also, RAI pulled a song change in 2012 and I still didn’t trust their initial pick.

When “Grande Amore” was officially announced as the official song, I finally listened to it and decided that it was okay. Yes, the harmonies were great. Yes, the harmonies were powerful. I’m guessing that’s going to show up in the recap and it’s going to sound better live than Emma’s entry last year. And yes, they’re going to get younger voters’ points from their looks and jury points from their voices.

At the same time, I’m still thinking dentist office if they didn’t have their music video up. In that case, I’ll pull out my ace of cakes card and say that the reason I haven’t watched the full music video is because there are too many scenes of people making out and it’s distracting. The guys also look like they’re off One Direction to sing opera.

Sorry, I’m not the biggest fan. Oh well, they’ll do great without some American who can’t vote anyways.

So instead of hosting San Remo Festival like the past 3 years to select their artist, RAI decided to just internally select both song and artist. It is a pretty good song (as it’s really Ohrwurm-y/catchy and can most likely keep me motivated while running on the track), but part of me feels like the beat sounds really familiar. That is, that someone could take the song, switch up the chords and lyrics, and the feeling would still be the same. Still, I like the amount of power in the refrain, since the lyrics push in iambs and that gets the point through. Even if you don’t understand the lyrics, you can still feel the song.